Weill Cornell Medicine and NanoString Collaborate to Create Comprehensive Spatial Atlas of Human Anatomy

First comprehensive spatial atlas of healthy human tissue from multiple organs, including multi-cell and single cell resolution using both GeoMx and CosMx

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NanoString Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: NSTG), a leading provider of life science tools for discovery and translational research, announced the launch of the Spatial Atlas of Human Anatomy (SAHA) initiative, in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine, to create multicellular, single-cell, and sub-cellular maps of 30 non-diseased organs from a healthy and diverse population of adults.

SAHA is a foundational effort to map 250 million cells at two spatial scales: whole transcriptome of histological features (50 µm to 2 mm in length) and 1,000 RNAs and 64 proteins at single cell resolution (50 nm resolution across 1 cm²). The project will establish best practices in experimental design, data analysis, and data standards for high-content spatial analysis across multiple human organs at a whole transcriptome and proteome level. The goal is to create a comprehensive open source, spatial reference standard that can be accessed by researchers around the globe to advance our knowledge of spatial biology.

“The goal is for SAHA to be a foundational database that can serve as a benchmark reference for spatial precision medicine. Comparing spatial datasets of various organs from multiple ethnicities can capture the variability in samples that researchers do not currently understand,” stated Chris Mason, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medicine. “The research team plans to show how spatial organ atlasing at multiple scales can be used for uncovering unique insights into organ development, health, and cancer.”

Dr. Mason will be presenting an overview of the SAHA study on Monday, February 6^th at 6:10pm ET, at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference in Hollywood, FL.

The GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) will measure the expression of whole transcriptomes matched to the exact shape of functional and structural histological organ features. In addition, the 1,000-plex RNA profiles and 64-plex protein profiles collected by the CosMx™ Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI) will enable the highest-ever subcellular resolution single-cell maps of cell types, lineage states, metabolic capacity, cellular neighborhoods, subcellular movements of organelles, while also detailing spatially resolved and novel ligand-receptor interactions.

“The SAHA data set, obtained at multiple spatial scales, analyte classes, and plex-levels, represents the largest data set of its kind ever collected,” said Joseph Beechem, SVP & CSO of NanoString. “This atlas will transform our understanding of how healthy tissues are organized and function and provide the foundation of understanding required to both treat and diagnose disease states.”

Variability is an important aspect of biological research. The samples, selected to advance medical research, will capture variability across sexes and ancestries (European, African, Latin American, East Asian, and South Asian). All results will be made available to the scientific community through the SAHA data portal, including raw and processed data.

SAHA is a collaborative effort with Weill Cornell Medicine’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, and the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction. It will be led by Drs. Chris Mason, Robert E. Schwartz, and Shauna L. Houlihan, and executed in two phases over the next three years. The research will investigate how NanoString’s spatial platforms can synergize for unprecedented biological insights.

Dr. Mason serves on the Scientific Advisory Board and is a paid consultant to NanoString

About NanoString Technologies, Inc.

NanoString Technologies, a leader in spatial biology, offers an ecosystem of innovative discovery and translational research solutions, empowering our customers to map the universe of biology. The GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler, cited in more than 190 peer-reviewed publications, is a flexible and consistent solution combining the power of whole tissue imaging with gene expression and protein data for spatial whole transcriptomics and proteomics from one FFPE slide. The CosMx™ Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI) is an FFPE-compatible, single-cell imaging platform powered by spatial multiomics enabling researchers to map single cells in their native environments to extract deep biological insights and novel discoveries from one experiment. The AtoMx™ Spatial Informatics Platform (SIP) is a cloud-based informatics solution with advanced analytics and global collaboration capabilities, enabling powerful spatial biology insights anytime, anywhere. The foundation of our research tools is our nCounter® Analysis System, cited in more than 6,500 peer-reviewed publications, which offers a secure way to easily profile the expression of hundreds of genes, proteins, miRNAs, or copy number variations, simultaneously with high sensitivity and precision.

For more information, visit www.nanostring.com.